Rapid7, a leading provider of security analytics software and services, today announced enhancements to Rapid7 Metasploit Pro and Rapid7 UserInsight to help security professionals detect and investigate compromised user credentials, the number one attack vector on computer systems. Exploiting user credentials to get a foothold in an organization and then move laterally across the network has become increasingly popular among attackers and is very hard to detect. Attackers harvest usernames and passwords through simple guessing, phishing, or by reusing credentials from public password leaks. Metasploit Pro now enables organizations to simulate attacks where credentials are compromised, to efficiently assess security risks, while UserInsight introduces a number of new capabilities for detecting and investigating suspicious user behavior.

"Our latest innovations leverage our deep understanding of the attacker mindset - combining insight from the Metasploit community, Rapid7 Labs research, and our services teams - to enable our customers to detect and contain security incidents quickly and effectively," said Lee Weiner, senior vice president of products and engineering at Rapid7. "The 2014 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report identified stolen credentials as the most common attack methodology: it's critical that our customers are able to detect and respond to this kind of activity rapidly."

Mirroring the increased use of stolen credentials by attackers, 59% of penetration testers focus more than half of their security assessments on credentials versus exploits, according to a 2014 survey1. Penetration testers typically use stolen credentials to compromise machines that in turn contain new credentials, repeating the process until they have extracted key data from the network. The biggest challenge of simulating these attacks often rests in effectively managing the large number of passwords, hashes, and SSH keys.

Metasploit Pro 4.10 increases productivity for penetration testers who leverage credentials to compromise large networks. It keeps track of credentials, including where they were gathered and which systems were compromised. The new features simplify and automate the reuse of credentials, and leverage them to gather more. This exploits the facts that users rarely use unique passwords per application, and that passwords are cached on the systems they use.

Most organizations have no way to distinguish an authorized user from a malicious attacker using stolen credentials, leaving the entire organization vulnerable to today's primary attack vector. Rapid7 UserInsight addresses this growing exposure by providing the ability for a security team to detect and investigate breaches and compromised user credentials across the organization. UserInsight integrates and correlates data from numerous native security event sources and other monitoring tools to recognize and prioritize attacks that would previously have escaped detection. Only UserInsight can combine context from users, end points, and cloud services with advanced detection techniques, such as honeypots, to help security teams respond to these types of attacks.

New updates to UserInsight include:

Agentless monitoring of endpoint activity: Detecting credential-based attacks requires endpoint monitoring, which traditionally requires deploying an agent to each system. UserInsight now detects attacks that can only be seen by monitoring endpoints such as lateral movement and privilege escalation. This is accomplished without an agent, so administrators do not need to deploy or manage software clients. This capability also enables customers to discover malware by reviewing rare and unique processes.

Spot malicious network scans: Once attackers gain access to the environment, for example by using credentials, they need to map out the network and identify potential targets. Honeypots can detect and alert on these types of scans, but security professionals often find them hard to deploy and maintain. UserInsight can now automatically deploy and maintain honeypots, making it quick and easy to spot attackers planning their next move.

Visually follow attacker's footsteps: Once an intruder has been identified, it is important to trace their footsteps through the network to identify which assets and users may have been compromised. UserInsight's new User Graph enables visual tracking of users accessing assets and automatically highlights attempts to access critical assets or elevate privileges. Armed with this information, teams can accelerate incident response and identify other users who may have been involved.

1 2014 Metasploit User Survey of 561 security professionals that regularly use Metasploit as part of their job.

About Rapid7 Metasploit

Knowing your opponent's moves helps you better prepare your defenses. Metasploit, backed by a community of 200,000 open-source users and contributors, gives you that insight. It's the most popular penetration testing solution on the planet. With an average of 1.2 exploits added each day, Metasploit allows you to find your weaknesses before a malicious attacker does. Rapid7 Metasploit Pro is the only solution that increases productivity of penetration testers by automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks, easily simulating advanced attacks through evading defensive solutions, and producing one-click reports that would otherwise take days to pull together. It also helps prioritize and demonstrate risk through closed-loop vulnerability validation, and measure security awareness through simulated phishing emails. Integration with Rapid7 Nexpose validates vulnerabilities in your environment, demonstrates risk, and prioritizes action plans. End-to-end phishing campaigns allow you to safely test user behavior with analytics to tell you who fell for the bait. Plus, you can view campaign results in Rapid7 UserInsight for a more complete view of user risk.

About Rapid7 UserInsight

Rapid7 UserInsight finds the attacks you're missing by detecting and investigating indications of compromised users from the endpoint to the cloud. UserInsight detects attackers even when they are hiding behind stolen user credentials - today's most common attack tactic. It can complement your existing monitoring technologies, increasing alert accuracy, providing a user lens to events, and detecting lateral movement and other commonly overlooked indicators. With a sophisticated interactive incident timeline, UserInsight makes it easy to identify the impact of an incident and accelerate response with instant search of

About Rapid7

Rapid7 security analytics software and services reduce threat exposure and detect compromise for 3,000 organizations across 78 countries, including over 250 of the Fortune 1000. We understand the attacker better than anyone and build that insight into our solutions to improve risk management and stop threats faster. We offer advanced capabilities for vulnerability management, penetration testing, controls assessment, incident detection and investigation across your assets and users for virtual, mobile, private and public cloud networks. To learn more about Rapid7 or get involved in our threat research, visit www.rapid7.com.